God Save the Queen
by Kspence92
Summary: The United Kingdom once held an empire that spanned the four corners of the world. See how this once mighty country was brought to her knees by the walking dead.
1. Homefront UK

**The face that greets me at the front door in this quiet, once bustling area of South London is aged beyond its years. David Barrister, former Home Secretary of the United Kingdom, welcomes me into his home and offers me a cup of tea. **

I can understand the anger that is directed at us, that is, former government ministers that served during the Crisis. Though I don't think it's entirely fair, I do understand why the anger is directed at us. Many people demand: "Why didn't you do more ?" Well for one, we just weren't prepared. How could we? Nobody dreamed such a thing was possible. We were all caught off guard. The Government, the intelligence community, security services….we just didn't expect it.

Eventually we began to put the pieces together : the rioting in Shanghai, massacres in Cape Town, street battles in Sao Paulo and then finally the Paris outbreak. The French health immediately got in contact with us and passed on what little information they had been able to obtain from preliminary lab tests and it was disturbing. The violence in recent weeks in parts of China and to a lesser extent South Africa, Brazil and Thailand had been caused by a virus. It killed its victims then brought them back to life with a taste for human flesh. It took all of us in the cabinet quite a while to get our heads around that. Some even thought it was a tasteless joke by the French Ministry of Health at first.

Before we could react by tightening border controls we saw out first domestic outbreak. Two separate cases on the same day to make it worse. One was an Afghan refugee who had been bitten in France on his way to seek asylum in the UK and managed to sneak in the back of a lorry before reanimating an attacking customs officers in Dover. The next case was a few hours later when a man who had suffered a minor bite on holiday in South Africa died shortly after getting off the plane and then began attacking people in Heathrow Airport.

We tried to quarantine those who had been bitten, but some slipped through the net, as happened in many countries. The public response was one of disinterest at first largely because we had suppressed the information about "the dead are walking", obviously to avoid a panic. All the public knew was that there was a new big sickening people and some of those people were acting "funny", and should be avoided. That didn't last for long though. As the virus spread and the cases multiplied , people began to ask questions. Hospital staff began to tell family members and friends that patients were dying and coming back. The media naturally picked this up and by that point South Africa was in a state of chaos, as was Thailand , the Brazilian coast and several cities in France. People were waking up to the fact that national governments were concealing the truth about the new virus. The world realised that the dead were walking. They realised there was no cure.

And so began the Great Panic.

Of course at this point we began to go into full swing by mobilizing our resources. Public safety advertisements went out over the TV, radio and newspapers telling people how to defend themselves and fortify their homes and such things. Posters were put up advising people to "keep calm and carry on". A dusk till dawn curfew went into effect for the major cities and army reservists were called up. This was before the country was plunged into chaos, even all these measures only slowed down the collapse of the country, it didn't prevent it.

**The fall of London, many people blamed that on the government...**

Of course they did. Everyone wanted somebody to blame. Everybody needed a scapegoat. Was it out fault ? well...no, not entirely. It would be unfair to say that. We had never faced such a crisis before. How many countries lost their capital during the war ? almost every single one. Paris, Washington, Beijing, Moscow, Cairo...the list goes on. The PM and the Cabinet stayed in London until the situation became untenable. The outbreaks in the capital were initially small and isolated. The infected were taken to local hospitals and "treated", but the numbers inevitably grew. Soon civil disorder was breaking out all over the city. We closed the schools, the cinema's, the sports venues and such things. This helped slow the spread, and also gave us room to house the many people who had been forced from their homes in all the violence. The airports were closed to non military flights, the train stations shut down, the tube network suspended. The bus companies surrendered their buses to us to help evacuate civilians from infected neighbourhoods. The capitals transport infrastructure finally entirely came to a halt. Fuel rationing also kept drivers off the streets, as did the curfews, which helped keep the streets clear for the security services to operate. The Prime Minister declared a state of emergency and had troops defend strategic sites all over London. Government offices in Westminster including Downing Street, and also Buckingham and Kensington Palaces, the airports and power stations. The roads into the city were blockaded and mined. London began to look like a fortress.

**But a fortress is to keep the enemy out...**

Exactly. The enemy was already festering inside the capital. In our hospitals, our nursing homes, the refugee camps and in peoples homes. Things went from bad to worse when a protest of about 20,000 people heading towards Parliament Square with placards demanding an end to food and fuel rationing was attacked by zombies. The infection rate increased exponentially and all hell broke loose. That was when we lost control in London. The bridges over the River Thames were blown by the Royal Air Force, which bought us a little time, but not much.

A mandatory mass evacuation was ordered the next day as we realised quarantining the capital was pointless and impossible. Every car, van, lorry, bus, bike, boat, train, plane and helicopter in London went into motion that day, bringing the roads to a standstill. More people were killed and infected and the zombies ate their way through the stalled traffic lanes. Full scale battles erupted as the armed forces used tanks, helicopters and fighter jets to fight back the hordes, but they only delayed them. Hundreds of thousands died trying to evacuate from London. It was the worst defeat in British history. Worse than Dunkirk. At least at Dunkirk we managed to get most of our people out.

The Prime Minister and the rest of us were in the Downing Street bunker, trying to coordinate the evacuation when an SAS squad came in and warned us that the zombies were about to breach the defences and basically manhandled the lot of us out of the building and into waiting cars where we were driven to Horseguards parade ground and bundled onto a waiting helicopter and flown to a military installation in the Welsh countryside for "continuity of government".

I was informed later that day that Her Majesty and her sons had also left Buckingham Palace for the relative safety of Windsor Castle, where she would remain for the rest of the war.

It was the middle of the night when we were flown from London but the city was well lit, even though the power had gone down. Dozens of fires burned through the night where the army had made a stand. The flames light up the River Thames and remember seeing all these people in the water. Must have been people who had missed the evacuation deadline. They were trying to swim the river to escape, only to be grabbed by the hands of the undead and dragged beneath the water to their deaths. It was just awful.

I turned my eyes away from the disaster down below.

Not one word was spoken by anyone for the rest of the flight.

We all knew what we felt leaving out capital and countrymen behind.

Guilt.


	2. Doctors Oath

**Dr Robert Smithson meets me in his office in the newly rebuild St Thomas' Hospital just across the Thames from the Houses of Parliament. He is approaching 48 years of age, yet looks almost 60. **

**Your hospital was one of the first to take in bite victims , what was your initial reaction when you realised what was going on ?**

We had already heard rumours floating around from staff at other hospitals. We thought it was a prank at first, but then the casualties started rolling through our doors and into our accident and emergency department. There was a lot of confusion in those first days, nobody had a clue what was going on. Some people even thought it was some sort of new drug, or maybe a cannibal cult. We immediately clicked on that something was very wrong when patients with even just minor bites were going into toxic shock and dying in front of us, then suddenly reviving and attacking our staff, or even other patients. We resorted to restraining patients to their beds and keeping them separated from our non aggressive patients in a separate quarantine ward. We communicated with other hospitals and they were all doing the same.

We were in constant contact with the Health Protection Agency and other London hospitals, trying to comprehend how seemingly dead people were getting back up and attacking others. As the days wore on we were forced to ban family from visiting their sick relatives for obvious safety reasons. More security guards were employed and eventually we requested a round the clock police presence to keep order in the hospital as the cases mounted. There were some days that i was working up to 16 hours, and sleeping for a few hours in the canteen or the staff room then going back to work. We were increasingly understaffed as people ran home to be with their families as the capital descended further and further into chaos.

Eventually we reached the stage where the army was called in as entire neighbourhoods were overrun with the walking dead. The government released barricaded behind heavy gates in Downing Street surrounded by machineguns and tanks, whilst we worked on the front lines of the outbreak trying to save as many lives as possible.

I was looking out the window one morning as the sun came up and for the first time i realised how truly devastating the situation was outside. I saw pillars of smoke snaking into the air as helicopters buzzed around like flies. There were sirens and screams and gunshots, and even the occasion explosion from the streets just a few miles away.

My attention was finally attracted to my phone where i had just received an email, it said the following :

To : Senior Staff, St Thomas Hospital

From : The Office of the Health Secretary of the United Kingdom

The situation has deteriorated to such a degree that central government is under the impression that the security services will not be able to maintain order in London for any longer than 32 hours, perhaps less. North London is almost entirely a red zone, and the PM has taken the decision to evacuate South London in an effort to save as many lives as possible. First and foremost the elderly and vulnerable, in this case hospital patients (those not infected with Z-066A) will be first to be evacuated. All hospitals in South London still operating (both NHS and private) will be evacuated via military and Red Cross vehicles in the coming hours and transported to facilities in other parts of the country for treatment.

Department of Health is aware that some patients are too frail or ill to be evacuated without suffering serious injury or even death, which is why by the order of the Prime Minister, all Head's of Hospitals have been granted the authority to authorize their staff for euthanasia by lethal injection. It is best to inform the patients they are being given a sedative. If Next of Kin is contactable tell them they passed away from complications. Whilst this may seem cruel please understand it is far less cruel than abandoning them to the infected.

A military officer will contact you directly in the coming hours and explain in detail the evacuation process. I strongly advise you cooperate with the military, and advise your staff to do the same.

Thank you

HM GOVERNMENT

Now that's not the kind of email one is used to getting is it ? But the infection was just a few streets away. The police had withdrawn further back and only a handful of army units were left and they were buying us time to evacuate the building. We rescued as many people as we could. The most critically ill - but still moveable - patients were loaded into the handful of ambulances we had left and driven south at speed whilst the more mobile patients and the staff were herded into army lorries and evacuated. We couldn't save everyone, however. There were some just too ill, too badly injured. Some hooked up to various machines. Those people were each administered a lethal, but painless injection which killed them almost instantly. None of them knew what it was, which im thankful for. Whilst i know in my heart that my actions were the right, perhaps the only thing to do, killing a dozen pensioners and cancer patients in their hospital beds is not something anyone would ever want to live with. I had no choice though. Id heard the reports on the radio about other hospitals being overrun and bed bound patients being torn to pieces still alive and conscious. I refused to allow that at my hospital.

I made a choice.

I have to live with it.


End file.
